


Five Families That Never Were

by Azar



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, F/M, Genderswap, M/M, Other, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-20
Updated: 2010-04-20
Packaged: 2017-10-09 01:29:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/81518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azar/pseuds/Azar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A glimpse into the lives of five Walker/Parkman/Suresh families that might have been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DebC](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DebC/gifts).



> Thanks to Medie for moral support, hand-holding, and helping me come up with the last two. Written for DebC for her birthday. Part one is set in the same universe as "By the Load I Bear," the others are all new AUs. "Casting": Parminder Nagra as Mehadi; Camryn Manheim as Madeline; Braeden Lemasters as Michael.

"Mehadi!" The door to Mehadi's hospital room had no sooner opened than Molly burst in, Matt following at a more mature, sedate pace.

For a moment she almost thought the little girl was going to climb up in the hospital bed with her, but then Matt – apparently catching the same thought in a more literal sense – sprang forward and grabbed her by the shoulders. "Hey, hey, easy now, kiddo. Mehadi's just squeezed something the size of a watermelon out of her gut – you bouncing on said gut is the *last* thing she needs right now."

Molly's face fell but Mehadi laughed. "I am still quite capable of hugs, however," she pointed out.

That brought the smile back as Molly wiggled out of Matt's grasp and bounced to the side of the bed to give Mehadi a careful but enthusiastic hug. "Matt says the baby's a girl. Can I see her?"

Mehadi nodded mutely, a hard lump forming in her throat at the request as she pointed towards the bassinet next to the bed.

What a change from when she'd first told Molly about the baby! The little girl had been hurt and angry, and rightly so. She'd felt betrayed that the child's father was the man who'd murdered her parents, and no amount of begging, pleading and promising had been able to convince her otherwise. In her heart, Mehadi had been sickly certain that all her worst fears were coming true.

_"Molly, I swear, I didn't know who he was. If I had...I never...I never would have let him touch me."_

Even now, she still didn't know what Matt had said to Molly to persuade her to forgive her, but it was one more thing she would be eternally grateful to him for: one of many.

Molly tiptoed around the bed and peered into the bassinet, her eyes going wide as a tiny "Oh!" escaped her lips. She glanced back over at Mehadi, beaming. "She's beautiful! What are you going to call her?"

"I thought I might..." Mehadi hesitated, glancing from Molly to Matt, uncertain what reaction to expect to her next words. "I thought I might name her Shanti. After my sister."

"What, and mess up this cool little M thing we've got going?" Matt complained in a tone of playful indignation. "I was thinking something more like Matilda or Martha or Madeleine..."

Molly giggled. "_I_ think it's perfect," she announced in Mehadi's defense.

Mehadi glanced over at her, startled. "You do?"

Molly nodded absently, one of her small fingers already captured in Shanti's even smaller fist. "Well, it makes sense...I mean, isn't she the reason we all met, really?"

At first Mehadi thought she was referring only to the two of them, but after a moment's thought she realized their lives where far more interwoven than that. Shanti's illness was the reason she'd been born. Her death was what had set their father on the quest that had eventually led him to Sylar, and if Sylar had not murdered Molly's parents, she would never have met Matt. If she had not become infected with the same illness that had killed Mehadi's sister, neither would they have ever found each other. If she had not taken up her father's quest after he too was murdered, then she would never have made the call to Matt's wife that had inadvertently set in motion their divorce. And if the Company had not brought Molly to New York after her parents' deaths, then Matt and Mr. Bennet would never have come to New York looking for her, thus bringing them all full circle.

It was a circle painted in blood and shaped by death and grief, but in spite of that somehow it had also brought them all unexpected happiness in the form of each other. It had brought Mehadi a man she loved more than life itself and two beautiful daughters, all of which she never could have imagined as little as a year ago.

"Yes," she finally said slowly. "I suppose she is."

Matt's eyes met hers warmly, and she didn't need to be a mind reader to see the affection in them. "Well, guess I can't argue with that kind of logic," he agreed cheerfully. "Shanti it is."

He leaned over and gave Mehadi a kiss on the forehead. "We'll just have to give her a middle name that starts with M."


	2. Chapter 2

They were walking home when it happened: strolling down the street, swinging Molly between them and grinning like a pair of fools at the sound of her delighted laughter. It was a brilliant, cloudless day, and for once the world felt safe. It should have been perfect.

The thought hit her out of nowhere like a mack truck traveling at 88 miles per hour: _What the hell is a hottie like that doing with that fat bitch?_

Matt stopped cold in the middle of the street, struggling to breathe and barely noticing that she'd inadvertently forced Molly and Mohinder to stop as well. She found herself searching the faces that moved around them like water: why, she couldn't tell. It wasn't like she really *wanted* to know who had voiced the secret fear she'd been hiding ever since this unexpected family had fallen into her lap three months ago.

"Madeline?" Mohinder asked softly. "Are you all right?"

She shivered. All her life, Matt had hated her given name, but somehow Mohinder made it sound like a caress. The first time he'd used it instead of calling her "Officer Parkman"…that was the moment she'd known she was in trouble: that she'd fallen for him.

Hell, who wouldn't fall for him? The man was beautiful, smart – most of the time, anyway – and every bit as much in love with the little girl they'd saved as Matt was.

Mohinder was studying Matt's face now with a thoughtful frown. Then, letting go of Molly's hand, he stepped closer and reached out to touch her shoulder. "What did you hear?"

Matt shook him off, still afraid of the way his slightest touch lingered on her skin like a kiss of fire. "Nothing. It's not important."

_I bet she told him the brat was his and he was just too dumb to notice she's too vanilla to be even half cinnamon. Hmm...gorgeous and stupid, I can work with this._

Matt spun, her eyes finally locking onto the source of the thought: a size-two bleach blonde with a salon tan and silicone cleavage, sitting at a bus stop a block away. Their eyes locked and the other woman's widened in shock. _Fuck, the bitch heard me! But I didn't say anything out loud...did I?_ Then her chin lifted in defiance. _So what if I did? Serves her right._

Mohinder's eyes followed Matt's, a grimace forming on his lips as he took in the silent showdown taking place.

_That's it, hot stuff,_ the blonde purred silently. _Take a good long look at what you're missing, then come over here and do something about it._

Matt stiffened and Mohinder's hand tightened on her arm. He couldn't have heard the thought, but there was no way he could miss that the blonde was shamelessly checking him out. "I see," he said softly.

"Did she think something bad about you?" Molly demanded, her hackles visibly rising. "That bitch!"

"Molly!" Matt and Mohinder exclaimed simultaneously, matching expressions of shock on their faces as they glanced down at the little girl.

She crossed her arms and stuck her chin out. "Well, she is! She doesn't even know you!"

Mohinder's eyes softened. "No, she doesn't. Anyone who knew our Madeline couldn't help but love her as much as we do."

If her circulatory system was a roller coaster, then those words would have been the upside-down triple loop for Matt's heart. She pivoted again to stare in disbelief at the man beside her. "Did you just say – ?"

Mohinder stepped closer to her, taking her face in both his hands and leaning in to give her a tender, lingering kiss on the lips. _Does that answer your question?_ he directed the thought fiercely towards her.

When they parted, Matt's first words were a breathless, "It does. But why? Why me?" Why her when he could have any woman he wanted?

"I may not be able to hear your thoughts," he answered with a wry smile, still cupping the side of her face with one hand. "But I've seen your heart and your heart is beautiful. As are you. Which you would have known had you only...paid a bit more attention."

"Yeah," Molly chimed in. "Seriously, what _took_ you two so long?"

Matt chuckled, lacing her fingers through Mohinder's and holding out her other hand to a grinning Molly. She cast one last smug glance at the blonde at the bus stop – who was staring after them with a mixture of fury, disgust and horror on her face – then turned back to her family. "What do I look like, a mind reader?"


	3. Chapter 3

"Ow!"

Mohinder let out a longsuffering sigh and let gloved hands drop to his side from where they'd been tending to the shallow scrape on his adopted son's forehead. "Michael..."

The boy scowled at him. "What? That stuff hurts worse than getting my face ground into the pavement ever did."

"Not half as much as it will if it gets infected," the geneticist pointed out. "If you don't want to deal with it, then I suggest you stop getting into fights at school."

"Yes, Mom."

"Michael..."

Another glare, but this time he sat still long enough for Mohinder to finish tending the wound with alcohol and cover it carefully with a patch of sterile gauze. Only when he'd finished did Michael speak again.

"It's not like I had a choice," he defended himself fiercely. "They called you and Matt a couple of fags."

Mohinder put the gauze back into the first aid kit with a pained grimace. "I see." Less than a year ago, he might have thought the children in question had called him a cigarette or a meatball – either of which would be a creative if an odd insult – but once Matt had come into his life he'd quickly learned the unpleasant truth of what the word meant in the United States. "That is admittedly crude...but not entirely inaccurate."

"Yes it is," Michael insisted, his words weighted with conviction and disgust in equal measures. "A fag isn't a gay man, it's a gay caricature. It means they don't want to see you as a person; they want to see you as some weak, effeminate, lisping, probably slutty stereotype. And you're not. Either of you."

Mohinder snorted. "I should say not." He closed the first aid kit and set it back on the table, studying his handiwork with a critical frown. "How many of them were there, again?"

Michael had the decency to look a little embarrassed. "Only three. They wouldn't have gotten the drop on me either if I hadn't tripped. I mean, it's not like any of them could've snuck up on me."

True enough.

"It still might be wiser to choose a battle with fewer opponents next time. Or at least not attempt to take them on all at once," Mohinder pointed out.

"I didn't take them on all at once, they took _me_ on all at once," Michael corrected, as if that made the end result any different. Then he did a double take. "Wait, does this mean I'm not in trouble?"

Mohinder hedged. On the one hand, picking fights in the school yard was almost a rite of passage, and at least Michael had chosen a worthy cause to fight for. On, the other, well...he certainly wasn't the world's expert on parenting, but it didn't seem entirely prudent to encourage one's own bad habits in one's children. "We'll discuss that when Matt gets home."

Maybe he could persuade Matt to pass along some of his police training.

For a moment, Michael's eyes lost their focus as they always did when he was using that extraordinary power of his to locate someone. "He is home," he announced with both excitement and trepidation. "He just started up the stairs. You didn't tell him, did you?"

Mohinder snorted. "I rather don't think I'll need to."

Sure enough, the first words out of Matt's mouth when he walked through the door moments later were, "You've been fighting again."

Whether this was because he'd read their minds or just drawn the logical conclusion from the bruises, bandages and split lip was anyone's guess.

Matt crossed the room in a few swift strides and crouched beside Michael's chair, taking his face in hand to study it. "Okay, that's it. Saturday, you and I have a date at the gym, kiddo. If you're going to keep doing this, I'm at least going to teach you how to do it right."

A corner of Mohinder's mouth twitched upward as he exchanged a knowing look with his partner. "My thoughts exactly."

Michael looked from one to the other before burying his face in his arms with a dismayed groan.


	4. Chapter 4

The door of Molly's room slamming was the first clue they had that something was wrong. Glancing at each other, Mehadi and Madeleine moved almost in unison, dropping what they were doing and moving immediately to the other side of that door. Matt tried the handle, but it was locked from the inside.

"Molly? Come on, honey, don't lock us out."

"Go away!" the little girl's angry voice came through the door only slightly muffled.

They looked at each other again, and then Mehadi tried next. "What's wrong, sweetheart? Maybe we can help."

There was silence for a long moment on the other side of the door, then the sound of the key in the lock made them both let out a silent breath of relief. When the door opened, however, it was only long enough for a furious-faced Molly to spit out. "How can you? What would either of *you* know about boys?"

She started to slam the door again, but Matt's cop reflexes got her hand in the opening before she could. "Molly..."

Molly flounced away from them and threw herself onto her bed with all the vigor of puppy love frustrated. "Go away," she repeated in a small voice.

They did no such thing. Instead, Mehadi seated herself on one side of the bed while Matt took the other. "It might surprise you what we know about boys. I don't know about Madeleine, but it took me the better part of my life to realize I preferred women."

"Still not the same," Molly muttered into her pillow.

The two women looked at each other helplessly. "Well, if you won't talk to us," Matt suggested. "What about Micah? He's a boy."

"Moms!" The horrified look on Molly's face when she raised it from the pillow was more than enough to answer that question, although Matt's next words just confirmed it:

"Oh, I see. So it's Micah that's the problem."

Molly turned bright red and buried her face in the pillow again.

Mehadi ran a hand over the little girl's hair. "Molly, talk to us. Even if you'd rather not take our advice on the subject, we can at least listen."

"And we can still beat him up if he did anything to hurt you," Matt added in her own inimitable way.

Molly just lay there for another long moment before finally rolling over. When she did, there was a hint of a smile shining through the tears. "No you can't. ‘Cause then Niki would just beat *you* up and then where would I be?"

"Hey, that's a risk I'm willing to take."

"Well, I'm not," Mehadi and Molly chimed in simultaneously, then looked at each other in surprise.

The world held its breath for a moment until Molly broke down into giggles and the other two followed. Reaching for her two adopted mothers, Molly allowed them to pull her into their arms and the three of them just held on to each other. She still didn't say anything about what typical-pre-teen-boy behavior had put Micah in her doghouse, but at least for the moment, it had ceased to matter.


	5. Chapter 5

"Do you ever worry that we can't give him everything he needs?"

Mehadi glanced up the file she'd been reading, following Madeleine's eyes to where Michael was lying on the floor, doing his science homework. "What do you mean?"

"I mean..." Matt sighed. "I mean he's a boy. I'm not, you're not, and neither one of us ever was. Do you ever wonder if that hurts us as parents?"

Mehadi set down the folder with a sigh and stood up, circling around the dining room table to where Matt was sitting and wrapping her arms around her. "I don't see why. Single women raise boys all the time; if one woman can do it, then surely two of us can."

Matt covered one of Mehadi's hands with her own. "I just...what do we do when he gets interested in girls?"

Mehadi laughed. "I think that's one area where we're rather experts, don't you? Being both girls ourselves and in love with one. Who better to teach him that a woman deserves to be treated with respect, not just as a means to an end?"

Matt looked thoughtful. "You've got a point..."

Mehadi kissed her thoughtfully on the temple. "What brought this on, all of a sudden?"

Madeleine let out a deep sigh that seemed to come from her toes. "Believe it or not, those groceries I picked up on the way home. I was in the greeting cards aisle - "

A snort. "Because it would be too simple to merely buy what we need without having to explore every single aisle."

Matt shot her a glare, both for the interruption and the comment. "Well, anyway, there I was, staring at a wall full of Father's Day cards and it suddenly hits me...Michael won't have a Father's Day this year."

"Father's Day?"

"It's an American holiday for celebrating your dad. Kinda like the Mother's Day that we did last month," she explained.

"Ah." Mehadi glanced over at Michael once again. "And you're afraid that the holiday will remind Michael of what he lost."

Matt nodded with a rueful smile. "It did for me. The first few Father's Days after my dad walked out on us? I hated them. I'd buy him a card every year and wind up ripping it into tiny little pieces when he never showed up to claim it. Michael – " She pointed towards the boy. "Michael's father *can't* come back. And with us living out here, he can't even visit his grave."

Mehadi pulled back suddenly, an idea striking her. "Certainly he can. Oh, it will be more expensive than if he were still living in Los Angeles, but why shouldn't the three of us take a vacation?"

For a moment, Matt's eyes lit up with the same excitement, but then they grew wary. "I don't know..."

"Los Angeles is a big place, Madeleine. I'm sure we can spend a few days there without running into Janice."

Matt looked at her lover, surprised. "I thought I was the mind reader in this relationship."

Mehadi smirked. "I don't have to read your mind. Sometimes you wear your thoughts in your eyes. But would that make you feel better? If we could give Michael a chance to spend this Father's Day with his father?"

She thought about it for a long moment, but finally nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, it would."

"Then I'll go make the reservations." Disentangling herself from her partner, Mehadi took a step back but was stopped by Matt's hand grasping hers.

"I'll make the reservations," she corrected with a twinkle in her eyes. "You're the genius, you go help Michael with his homework. I have it on good authority that the chapter he's reading right now is confusing the hell out of him."


End file.
